How I do a cooked rye mash

[nateboussad]

The rye doesn't need the long boil that the corn does to gelatinize it starch. I would just add it when I shut off the heat. I always let mine sit a few extra days till it clears and all settles. Then i rack it off. I push the tube down into the grain bed which will also act as a filter. Maybe add a little acid to the mashing process. Otherwise everything sounded right.





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[ShawnT]

I did 100% rye but I mixed malted and unmalted if memory serves correctly. I didn't age it, we drank it all. It was very tasty. I'll be experimenting with rye again soon enough.

The main reason I wanted to do some 100% rye was to learn the taste. Rye has a very distinct taste and being able to recognize and understand it will affect a number of other spirits which rely on rye for the mash, specifically Bourbon and Tennessee whiskeys.

What ratio malted to non malted, did ypu add any other nutrients or anything other than rye and yeast?

[jayka]

A photo essay of sorts. I was distracted during this mash so I didn't take photos of a lot of the process, I'll try to complete this next time around.

First, get yourself a Big Ole Pot (BOP):

Continued next message after I process some photos...

Hey Jesse, Just quoted you to hopefully get your attention. do you sparge this or press it to remove the grain?
I've done plenty of barley mashes but never a Rye and want to know if its spargeable? I'm planning on a 50/50 grain bill.

[Uncle Jesse]

I sparge.

[jayka]

Excellent! Just what I wanted to hear. Thanks

[jayka]

Epic fail for me.

First let me say that this is not my first rodeo when it comes to mashing grain. I am an all grain beer brewer too.

Was going to do a 10 gallon total batch, but had to split it in 2 because of my cooler size. Mashed ~12 lbs of malted Rye with ~6 gallon of water at 150 degrees. I got conversion based on iodine test, but the whole mash was so gelatinous that it was almost impossible to run much water off, and that water that did run off had a ridiculously low SG...

Maybe I am doing something wrong, but I'll need to identify it prior to trying a 100 rye malt batch again.

I'm trying to strip my 50/50rye barley mash ATM and it's so thick it's burning on the bottom and puking like a mother f##ker!

[ravi]

nice!!!!

[82Winger]

I recently ran a batch of George Washington Rye. My end result was very disappointing. I only finished with 2 qts. at 30% abv. This started as a 12 gal. batch. I did not do an iodine test but my finished mash sg was 1.040 and the pH was 6. I did a grain in mash, squeezed, let it settle, tested the sg and it was 1.020. I let it ferment another 2 days and tested again, it went up. So I siphoned off and ended with around 8 gal. to run. I have made sour mash, bourbon, and 4 grain whiskeys before with success. This one has me stumped.

[Ben]

Glucan left by the rye will mess up a hydrometer or refractometer reading, glucan rest can help, either that or your yeast just didn't perform, need more info to diagnose that... did it taste sweet before you started the run? There are a bunch of possibilities for poor conversion, insufficient milling, missing temps, inadequate diastatic power, etc. You would need to post your process to get some help. Start a thread maybe.

[82Winger]

I milled everything pretty fine. I cooked the corn first at 180 degrees. When it cooled to 170 I added the rye. It became very thick so I added 1 gal. water. At 150 I stirred in the barley and 2 tsp. of Gypsum. Stirred well. At 80 degrees I stirred in 1 1/2 to 2 pounds of sugar and disolved 2 packets of Fleishmans yeast.
The taste of the mash was sour before the run.

[Ben]

Try high temp enzyme for the corn, and bring your gel temp up to ≈190. That should help. Make sure after you add the malt you are hold somewhere around 145 until the mash passes the conversion test as described in the recipe.

[still_stirrin]

I milled everything pretty fine. <— How “pretty” was it? Lipstick on a pig pretty?

I cooked the corn first at 180 degrees. <— The gelatinization is easier (quicker) if heated higher, to 190*F to 195*F.

When it cooled to 170 I added the rye. <— Too hot for the enzymes to work. They’ll quickly denature above 165*F.


It became very thick so I added 1 gal. water. <— Don’t you just love the glucans in rye, especially when combined with the corn pudding? I mash rye separate from corn, giving the rye (I use malted rye) a glucan rest at 110*F to 115*F before adding the the corn after it was gelled at 190*F for 60 to 120 minutes.

At 150 I stirred in the barley and 2 tsp. of Gypsum. Stirred well. <— OK, 150*F is a good strike temperature for the barley addition. But, I would put the water treatment into the water when heating it up, that is - BEFORE starting any of the mash (corn gel or rye malt glucan rest or wheat malt protein rest). The calcium sulfate (gypsum) helps enzyme processes by acidification.

At 80 degrees I stirred in 1 1/2 to 2 pounds of sugar and disolved 2 packets of Fleishmans yeast. <— You lost me here. Why add sugar if you’ve properly mashed your grains? Sugar will “steal” flavor from your grain mash.

The taste of the mash was sour before the run.<— As expected. When the sugars have been consumed, it will be “tart”, like a lemon-drop. Plus, a part of the fermentation process produces acids as a byproduct. Those too have a “sour” taste. However, the corn (if properly mashed) will produce a sweetness in the beer … imagine a bowl of cooked corn on your dinner table, sweet and buttery … that will be evident in the beer’s taste.

So, your process could benefit from some correction. Keep practicing and you’ll get it.
ss

[82Winger]

Thank you Still-Stririn for your input. I will give the changes a try next time. Hopefully my yield will be much better. By the way, it was still a pig in the end.

[82Winger]

I have adjusted my recipe. Any advice is appreciated.

George Washington Rye.docx

(11.49 KiB) Downloaded 107 times

[Ben]

Heating the water to 190 isn't going to do it, your temp will drop as soon as the room temp corn hits it. You will either have to preheat the corn, or even easier just heat the water to boiling. Make sure you stir it thoroughly, dry spots (dough balls) destroy efficiency. Once you have your temp either wrap your pot in some blankets or sleeping bag, or use a cooler to mash in to retain the heat. Corn gelling can take an hour, or three depending on the corn, enzyme and how finely you grind it. Needs to retain heat, don't pull the covering off until at least an hour has passed, do a starch test, if it passes you can move on.

If you are going to do a glucan rest your 4 gallons of water needs to be about 123° to hit the 110-115° range (it's going to depend on your systems thermal mass... take notes the first brew of a recipe can be rough but with good notes the second and beyond will be easy), you have to work the temps from the bottom up, as the enzymes denature at higher temps. Glucan rest only needs about 15 mins.

Once you mix the corn and the barley, stir it and check the temp. You may have to add hot or cool water to hit your Saccharification temp (around 145). Hold at 142-145 for at least an hour, then iodine test. Hotter than about 148 and your going to have excessive alpha amylase temp, which produces unfermentables. Colder than about 140 and things slow down.

[82Winger]

Yesterday I got around to running my revised formulation. I'm happy to say everything went well. I will post when fermentation is complete. Thanks to all for your guidance.

[82Winger]

I strained my grains after 9 days of fermenting. I let it settle out for 2 more. The SG was 1.010 and a few small bubbles were rising. I ended with a 5 gallon carboy and about 3" of settlement. I racked it off and ran it. The proof started at 90 and I shut it down at 20. It yielded 7 pints. Great taste. Does all this seem the norm? Thanks again.

[bilgriss]

The "norm" is entirely relative to your recipe, initial percentage alcohol, dilution, and how you run it. What you are describing sounds within those boundaries. As you start developing a repeatable process, you'll get a sense of what to expect depending upon how things go each step of the way.

I usually run a little deeper than 20 proof - I go to at least until I'm below the abv or the beer I'm running on the stripping runs, and if I'm in the mood, run down to the sweetwater to use for proofing on the spirit run. And sometimes I don't.

7 pints feels a little low, but I don't have any idea of how much you discarded on the heads side of the run, so again, it's all relative.

[Chucker]

I like the flavor of rye whiskey but discussions about mashing for it just don’t seem to be all that regular on HD. This thread seems to cover the bulk of it so I thought I’d share.
I’ve been doing AG infusion bourbon type mashes for years with good results and I wanted to get more rye flavor, so in this batch I’ve flip-flopped the corn and rye ratios, at around 65% and 15%, with the rest being some 6-row and a bit of caramel malt. I still rely on exogenous enzymes to complete conversions.
Corn is gelatanized with a keg of water just off the boil and left to rest while another keg is heated to 170 deg. Once this is added I put the rye in and let everything rest until temp goes below 150 before adding remaining malts and extra enzymes.
With a corn based mash this handily converts and clears overnight. With the rye based version I had a nice sweet cereal! Since it was still too warm for yeast I gave it little more glucoamylase and some time to cool. It thinned a little bit, but not much. It was very sweet, though. I assumed glucan was my problem for which I had no experience or answer so I went ahead with pitching yeast and hoped for the best. Fermentation was on the grain
After a few days I knocked down the head. It was clearly fermenting nicely and the now thinner liquid was still very viscous, but notably tart. I figured this could be a pretty expensive fail as I figured it would want to puke like crazy.
A bit of checking and I located some beta-glucanase. Figured I’d try and hope that it would still do something post-ferment. It did thin out quite a bit but did not clear well at all. I pulled the liquid portion and filled the pot to around 50# and gave it couple Tbsp of veg oil. There were no problems with boil over and it seemed to strip out without issue. I repeated as necessary, dumping the spent backset into the grains to let them settle out again and recover more alcohol in the process without squeezing.
All in all I stripped (thoroughly) 6 gal of low wines to go into the spirit run along with the final rack off of the grains. This ran fully as expected and gave up about 2-3/4 gal @75%.
Being a rather expensive mash to begin with I am running a bonus wash out of it by melting in 25# sugar into about 5 gal of hot backset along with about 10 gal of water back into the grain bed. Aerate and pitch yeast.
I did this a few weeks ago to a similar batch of malt whisky mash and was very pleased with the initial results. I won’t really know for 6-12 months, but it seems promising.

[Wildcats]

Sounds promising as well. Thanks for sharing.